Potential Command Injection in shell-quote
Published 18 Feb 2019 · Updated 10 Sept 2026
Affected package
- Affected
- <1.6.1
- Fixed in
- 1.6.1
npm install shell-quote@1.6.1Details
Affected versions of shell-quote do not properly escape command line arguments, which may result in command injection if the library is used to escape user input destined for use as command line arguments.
Proof of Concept:
The following characters are not escaped properly: >,;,{,}
Bash has a neat but not well known feature known as "Bash Brace Expansion", wherein a sub-command can be executed without spaces by running it between a set of {} and using the , instead of to seperate arguments. Because of this, full command injection is possible even though it was initially thought to be impossible.
const quote = require('shell-quote').quote;
console.log(quote(['a;{echo,test,123,234}']));
// Actual "a;{echo,test,123,234}"
// Expected "a\;\{echo,test,123,234\}"
// Functional Equivalent "a; echo 'test' '123' '1234'"Recommendation
Update to version 1.6.1 or later.
Is GHSA-qg8p-v9q4-gh34 in any of your client repos?
Checking one package by hand is fine. Checking it across forty client projects is not. NPMscan reads the lockfiles in every GitHub repo you pick, finds each project with an affected shell-quote, and gives you the command that fixes it.
References
Advisory data from OSV.dev (opens OSV.dev in a new tab), refreshed daily.